A handful of Mac users have reported problems upgrading their system to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, with various error messages, problems and quirks stemming from the Mac App Store download.

One growing thread at the official Apple Support Communities relates to an issue where users are asked to select the disk where they want to install OS X. When attempting to select their Macintosh HD as the install destination, user 'Dancepal1948' said they are given the error message: "This disk cannot be used to start up your computer."

Another user, 'Junction10,' said they had no problems installing Lion on their MacBook Pro, but when attempting to apply the upgrade on their iMac, the same error occurred.

"My disk also shows GUID Partition Table, but I too had the message that Lion cannot be installed on this drive," they wrote.

Apple Support told the person to run Repair Disk Permissions and doing a "clean" repair via the original Snow Leopard install DVD. But then when attempting to retry the installation, the Mac App Store allegedly says that Lion is already "Installed," forcing them to launch the actual installer from the system's Applications folder.

Users who have experienced that particular issue tend to have multiple partitions on their Mac, which could be causing the problems. Users utilizing Apple's Boot Camp software to run both Windows and Linux installations in addition to OS X have reported problems with installing Lion.

Those posting in the thread have offered a number of potential fixes, including the deleting, resizing and repairing of disk partitions.

In another, smaller thread, some users have encountered different hard drive problems related to S.M.A.R.T., or Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. 'Aisling Doherty' and others have been met with errors stating that a disk has S.M.A.R.T. errors that cannot be repaired when attempting to install Lion.

Most people posting in the thread have encountered the issues when attempting to install on an iMac all-in-one desktop. The original poster said they contacted Apple support and were instructed to initiate a disk repair, but those steps did not resolve the issue.

"It's clear that the problem comes from Lion and not from the disk of our iMac," 'zelaurent' wrote. "Wait'n see. Apple will probably provide a patch to us."

Users have also reported Mac App Store-related issues when attempting to buy both Lion and Lion Server. User 'Robert Breeding1' found what they called a "process problem" in which the Mac App Store does not recognize a prior purchase of Lion when attempting to install Lion Server on a separate machine.

As a result, the storefront requires users to buy two copies of Lion, even though users are allowed to install one purchase on multiple machines based on the Mac App Store terms of service.

"So i bought Lion and its downloading on my usual mac," they wrote. "then went to my server and tried to purchase lion server. i was told i had to buy lion and lion server both for $79. both computers use the same store account. so why do i have to buy lion twice?"

The person said they contacted Apple in an attempt to receive a refund for purchasing Lion twice, and they were referred to e-mail support for App Store purchases.

Lion launched on Wednesday and is exclusively available through the Mac App Store for $29.99. The digital download destination first opened in January, and Lion is Apple's first major operating system release that is only available via digital distribution.

Apple announced this week that it will make Lion available on a USB thumb drive this August. But the company has discouraged users from obtaining the latest version of Mac OS X in this manner by pricing it much higher, at $69.

I installed LION yesterday on a quad core iMac, eight core Mac Pro and Last generation MacAIr
It was the easiest install ever. 10 -15 minutes for download per machine and 30 minutes for installation.
It recognized that I had bought it and did not charge me.
In all machines it did say that there is an error in downloading and asked me to retry. The download icon o the Dock did not reappear but it did download it and installed it without a glitch

Call me a risk taker, but I decided last night to jump off the pier and just go ahead and install the thing. It installed very smoothly, no issues or concerns. A cursory check afterward revealed all important programs to still be functioning. In fact, my desktop looked so similar to Snow Leopard I was worried at first it didn't install. More testing tonight, but so far, so good.

First time, straight install and everything was fine. However, I was looking for a way to make an install disk and do a clean install.

Research indicated that rebooting with a Command+R would allow an install menu to come up and do a clean install. It seems I selected the wrong menu option because all it did was to install Lion again.

Third attempt, I decided to reboot with a command+R, use the disk utility to erase the disk and then install. Went without a hitch and upon rebooting, Lion booted for the first time, taking me through the set up process (user accounts, WiFi, etc.). Now it's up and running and all is good in the world.

I was pretty impressed with how it all worked. It maintained my WiFi connection throughout the process, even with an erase of my Macintosh HD and it just did everything on it's own. It recognized my computer as having been authorized for the install and didn't ask me again after the initial authorization process.

The new install has rendered my Adobe Pro suite completely useless. I know this is referenced in another thread, but seriously folks. I can't open a PDF without the whole program hanging up and crashing, let alone any serious work.

Exactly - that's why it didn't install for some people. Their disks were likely f'd up so Lion didn't go ahead. Maybe their disks were so full it couldn't make the recovery partition. Who knows? We don't have all the information.

I wonder if any of these users made a boot DVD and tried to install from that?

The new install has rendered my Adobe Pro suite completely useless. I know this is referenced in another thread, but seriously folks. I can't open a PDF without the whole program hanging up and crashing, let alone any serious work.

You can configure it to have no UI -- it'll then use no CPU except once every hour or so, when it asks the drive about its SMART status. If the drive reports a problem, SMART Reporter emails you.

Note that some drives do not report SMART errors unless the drive is already very very badly broken, and pretty much all drives last about two years these days, so you really, REALLY need a backup solution.

Let's not start fanboying it up so quickly, cowboy.... Just making an observation. Did Apple walk into my house and pistol-whip my Adobe? No. Did Lion call my Acrobat up with a bomb threat? No. But it worked yesterday and now it does not. Relax.

The new install has rendered my Adobe Pro suite completely useless. I know this is referenced in another thread, but seriously folks. I can't open a PDF without the whole program hanging up and crashing, let alone any serious work.

Adobe has published a detailed article about Lion compatibility for their products.

It took 4.5 hours to install Lion on my iMac (late 2010), starting at 8:45 in the morning yesterday. The download was slow; after the download it started to install the program, but when it reached "9 minutes" remaining, it stayed on that message for at least 1.5 hours until I turned the machine off. I then restarted the machine. At startup it seemed to run okay at first. After an hour it froze and I had to restart it. I had to restart it so far 5 times in one day because it freezes. This machine is a quad4 (i5) with 16 G of memory. I have shut down most of my programs this afternoon and so far so good. I think maybe, just maybe my Fusion program may be at fault, but that is just a wild guess. I now have Fusion powered off.

But my MacbookPro (2011) downloaded Lion and installed Lion in less than an hour. So far no problems with this machine and the Lion OS. I don't have VM Fusion on this machine.

TextEdit seems to be buggy as hell but no problem as I don't use it much at all. Some of the new behavior takes some getting use to but I'm already getting the hang of it.

On the positive side it does look like Lion will extend the life of my Mac Book Pro a bit. In general it seems to be faster and when things do beach ball it isn't for long. Somethings have considerably improved behavior with iTunes being significantly snappier. Really it is noticeably quicker, and of course Safari is snappier.

Speaking of Safari this is a major upgrade, I'm surprised they only bumped the release number to 5.1. Take a look at the new features for some of us it is worth an upgrade to Lion all oN it's own.

Python gets upgraded to 2.7.1.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MacInsider2

And thus why to always wait for a .x release. Thanks for the good work beta testers!

In this case I think you are wrong about waiting. This is a massive release no doubt but it immediately brings a bunch of valuable features to users. Considering this Lion appears to be surprisingly stable. For me it has breathed new life into old hardware, that is a good thing.

As a side note installation does take a long time. The thing here is that you have to upgrade multiple apps, install Java if you need it and otherwise futz around. On the bright side some of those upgrades are offering up new Lion functionality.

Users who have experienced that particular issue tend to have multiple partitions on their Mac, which could be causing the problems. Users utilizing Apple's Boot Camp software to run both Windows and Linux installations in addition to OS X have reported problems with installing Lion.

I figured this would be a problem because of the "recover partition" that is supposedly created.

I had no problem upgrading my wifes 2008 iMac, which I first upgraded to 10.6 (she was worried about printing problems which I had after upgrading my Mac Pro to 10.6 at first). Then I updated it to 10.6.8 with the combo updater I kept around, then Finally to 10.7.

But I updated my 2009 Mac Pro, also without issues, and then have had two, still unresolved.

The first is that I haven't been able to update iTunes to 10.4. I tried it twice, but both times had a message of an unexpected problem. I turned the machine off, and then back on, but with the same problem. So I've got 10.3.1 still.

Then I tempted to update my iPad to 4.3.4, but keep getting the message that it couldn't begin a session.

Haven't looked to see the iTunes version on my wife's machine, and she hasn't tried to update her iPad, because she did that a couple of days ago.

It took 4.5 hours to install Lion on my iMac (late 2010), starting at 8:45 in the morning yesterday. The download was slow; after the download it started to install the program, but when it reached "9 minutes" remaining, it stayed on that message for at least 1.5 hours until I turned the machine off. I then restarted the machine. At startup it seemed to run okay at first. After an hour it froze and I had to restart it. I had to restart it so far 5 times in one day because it freezes. This machine is a quad4 (i5) with 16 G of memory. I have shut down most of my programs this afternoon and so far so good. I think maybe, just maybe my Fusion program may be at fault, but that is just a wild guess. I now have Fusion powered off.

But my MacbookPro (2011) downloaded Lion and installed Lion in less than an hour. So far no problems with this machine and the Lion OS. I don't have VM Fusion on this machine.

I have a MacBook (the one thats now being discontinued....)

For me, it took 5-5.5 hours (from 6 pm to 11-1130 PM) and at the last minute it gave me the message: "Error has occurred. Unable to install. Please check your network connections," or something to that effect. I freaked out for a couple minutes, and hit the install (and this was just for downloading, not the actuall installing) button on my Purchase screen, totally thinking it would restart from the very beginning-- but, it just continued and finished the download... Not sure if i'm ready to Install it yet....

The new install has rendered my Adobe Pro suite completely useless. I know this is referenced in another thread, but seriously folks. I can't open a PDF without the whole program hanging up and crashing, let alone any serious work.

1) This is 100% Adobe's fault and not Apple's
2) Without telling us which of the many hundreds of Adobe suites it is, no one can suggest solutions for you.
3) The biggest change vis a vis Adobe for Lion is that all the crappy Java stuff and Flash stuff they use will be screwed up.

Try updating the Java (it's not automatically updated anymore), and it will likely work again as long as it's not CS4 or before.

Let's not start fanboying it up so quickly, cowboy.... Just making an observation. Did Apple walk into my house and pistol-whip my Adobe? No. Did Lion call my Acrobat up with a bomb threat? No. But it worked yesterday and now it does not. Relax.

Seriously you need to realize that some software will have issues. If you are running apps from a company known for producing crap don't you think it would have been a good idea to be conservative with your upgrade.

Look at it this way, I upgraded to Lion without even doing a backup. I did so knowing that if I did have issues I would need to either delete a software package, upgrade it or find a replacement. So far no huge problems. That includes both commercial and open source software. So don't expect us to feel sorry for you because Adobe sucks.